Delaruelle, who was much in love with the whimsicalities of
his small realm, to elicit something comical; but not even he
expected anything so perfect as the last. To complete the picture
of convict life in Tai-o-hae, it remains to be added that these
criminals draw a salary as regularly as the President of the
Republic. Ten sous a day is their hire. Thus they have money,
food, shelter, clothing, and, I was about to write, their liberty.
The French are certainly a good-natured people, and make easy
masters. They are besides inclined to view the Marquesans with an
eye of humorous indulgence. 'They are dying, poor devils!' said M.
Delaruelle: 'the main thing is to let them die in peace.' And it
was not only well said, but I believe expressed the general
thought. Yet there is another element to be considered; for these
convicts are not merely useful, they are almost essential to the
French existence. With a people incurably idle, dispirited by what
can only be called endemic pestilence, and inflamed with ill-
feeling against their new masters, crime and convict labour are a
godsend to the Government.

Theft is practically the sole crime. Originally petty pilferers,
the men of Tai-o-hae now begin to force locks and attack strong-
boxes. Hundreds of dollars have been taken at a time; though, with
that redeeming moderation so common in Polynesian theft, the
Marquesan burglar will always take a part and leave a part, sharing
(so to speak) with the proprietor. If it be Chilian coin--the
island currency--he will escape; if the sum is in gold, French
silver, or bank-notes, the police wait until the money begins to
come in circulation, and then easily pick out their man. And now
comes the shameful part. In plain English, the prisoner is
tortured until he confesses and (if that be possible) restores the
money. To keep him alone, day and night, in the black hole, is to
inflict on the Marquesan torture inexpressible. Even his robberies
are carried on in the plain daylight, under the open sky, with the
stimulus of enterprise, and the countenance of an accomplice; his
terror of the dark is still insurmountable; conceive, then, what he
endures in his solitary dungeon; conceive how he longs to confess,
become a full-fledged convict, and be allowed to sleep beside his
comrades. While we were in Tai-o-hae a thief was under prevention.
He had entered a house about eight in the morning, forced a trunk,
and stolen eleven hundred francs; and now, under the horrors of
darkness, solitude, and a bedevilled cannibal imagination, he was
reluctantly confessing and giving up his spoil. From one cache,
which he had already pointed out, three hundred francs had been
recovered, and it was expected that he would presently disgorge the
rest. This would be ugly enough if it were all; but I am bound to
say, because it is a matter the French should set at rest, that
worse is continually hinted. I heard that one man was kept six
days with his arms bound backward round a barrel; and it is the
universal report that every gendarme in the South Seas is equipped
with something in the nature of a thumbscrew. I do not know this.
I never had the face to ask any of the gendarmes--pleasant,
intelligent, and kindly fellows--with whom I have been intimate,
and whose hospitality I have enjoyed; and perhaps the tale reposes
(as I hope it does) on a misconstruction of that ingenious cat's-
cradle with which the French agent of police so readily secures a
prisoner. But whether physical or moral, torture is certainly
employed; and by a barbarous injustice, the state of accusation (in
which a man may very well be innocently placed) is positively
painful; the state of conviction (in which all are supposed guilty)
is comparatively free, and positively pleasant. Perhaps worse
still,--not only the accused, but sometimes his wife, his mistress,
or his friend, is subjected to the same hardships. I was admiring,
in the tapu system, the ingenuity of native methods of detection;
there is not much to admire in those of the French, and to lock up
a timid child in a dark room, and, if he proved obstinate, lock up
his sister in the next, is neither novel nor humane.